THE YOUTH, ENVY AND BRANDNIFISSENCE

.Everybody wants to stand out and be seen to be different, even if they are not. This is most reflected in today’s changing dress code. Eccentric colours are the in –thing.Purple,yellow,green are all mixed up and this deemed fashionable today.Mo hawks,hairstyles with amazing colours not even in the rainbow have sprung up. Generation Y wants to be noticed and they are not timid about it. In the work place they are aggressive, go-getters, multi-taskers, IT savvy and extremely ambitious. ‘Brandfissence’ can be used to refer to a brand that has managed to achieve cognizance and loyalty to its target audience. It is a brand that stands out, because it reaches out to consistently meet the needs of its customers in a unique way its competition cannot match up to.

How many of our local brands can be tagged ‘swagnfiscent’ or ‘brandfiscent’? Envy as stated in last week’s article in Smart Company by Chris Harrison, should be the point of differentiation of a brand. A brand I would love to see being envied by all is BrandKenya.It has all the right ingredients, positioning the right mix is the challenge. In the sporting arena, the magnificence of both our Junior and Senior Athletic Teams is testament to that. The Kenya Under-20 football team recently pulled off a rare home and away win against Sudan. These are significant achievements that should put‘swag’ in our step! Our country is endowed with so many points of envy that daily go unstated. Kenya needs to bask in these milestones and package itself appropriately to the world in readiness for future successes. Enviable tourism destinations, the warm culture of Kenyans, attractive investment climate, the growing BPO and ICT industries, to name but just a few, should be sources of ENVY for Kenya. The passing of the new constitution has facilitated the right environment for all of these activities to thrive.